


like staring at the other half of me, you were right here all along

by enemeriad



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: F/M, Written post 2x14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 13:50:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemeriad/pseuds/enemeriad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna rediscovers herself and in the process, kills a plant or how Donna Paulsen made herself matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like staring at the other half of me, you were right here all along

 

He says something about coming in early that she barely hears, her heart thumping so loudly in her head she thinks it's accidentally been repositioned. Harvey looks back at her again, walking back towards the office. 

'Got it?' He tells her like she's the one who's late to work all the time. 

She screws up her face, trying to imagine what she looks like any other day when she's indignant and proud and 'better than him' and either Juilliard paid off, or Harvey's attention to detail really is slipping because he doesn't say anything just struts back towards his office without another word. Her breath comes stumbling out, gasping from her throat and she calls the elevator again, propped against the cool marble. 

She feels so hot all of a sudden and she kind of laughs to herself like: (aren't damsels supposed to feel cold and numb and isn't rain supposed to fall or was that just in bridget jones' diary) and the air around her feels like it finds her space too unmanageable like she's too big, too large, to unnecessary. Her fingers curl around the handles of her tote until she feels the impressions of the leather underneath her fingernails and still she feels like she's a little too far from the ground. Where did this all come from. 

(it isn't a question, not neccessarily. denial cannot mask her understanding.)

' _ding.'_

Unecessary is perhaps the wrong word, she thinks after a pause. Donna is a necessity in every possible way except in the area of Harvey's life where she is a surplus, a lesser, secretary. It makes her feel so fragile all the time, even after she punched Hardman, it still felt like it wasn't enough. She didn't really show him up, just reacquainted herself with facts in her life she chose to surpress. That moment, the second time her palm crossed his cheek, she felt like she was just acquiescing. He knew why she got herself fired and she was punishing him for punishing her with the truth. 

She slides into the list and leans against the back mirror. It was humiliating, it was debilitating, it was old wounds, cut open again. 

She has no pithy remark, there is no zany punchline. 

 

ii.  
It is a cold house and an empty bottle of wine she goes to sleep with. 

That is another uniformity in her life that she refuses to acknowledge.

(she dreams of a tombstone that says r.i.p here lies donna paulsen, diligent co-worker, secretary and occasional listener of jazz) 

 

iii.   
She gets him his morning coffee, wears a red dress (because why the fuck not?) and plays Mother with Scottie for the fifth time on the phone. 

'Don't screw around with him,' she hears herself repeating for the 7th time as the woman has the audacity to show up in his office. She's all bravado and a hand on her hip, arched eyebrows until Scottie shuts her down with a small shrug and a, 'I'll take what you can't get.'

Before she sits down at her desk for lunch, she overhears Elise from the 47th talking to Norma about how protective she is over Harvey. 

'They're fucking, it has got to be a thing.'

'I don't know,' Norma replies, looking over her glasses towards the conference room where Harvey and Jessica are playing darts with the firms future existence. 'Donna loves Harvey but she loves him like a pot plant that needs special attention.'

Elise nods seriously, her face widening like an umbrella to receive her gossip-ly enlightenment. It reads comically, to be sure, but Donna just feels disgusted and sick and is this really all her life is? Looking after a fucking temperamental pot plant?

 

iv.  
It is lifes greatest punishment to dish out irony when it is least needed. 

'Donna, can you get me a sparkling water?'

 

v.  
She finds herself at her desk, buried in the 46 cases for 46 different women for Fulsam Foods, at midnight on a Friday night and it all feels too tragic. Her phone buzzes to alert her that her dry cleaning is ready to be picked up.

She smiles. 

At least there's one person in her life thats punctual and steady. Too bad they're 67 and prefer steam cleaners to human interactions.

 

vi.   
She rationalises on the train home that there will be no appeasing conclusion to this story she has built up in her head because there is no story. Her mouth curls in on itself, trying to become as small as possible lest she blurt out to Rachel that she spent 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon feeling crying about her love life. It makes perfect sense, she thinks, that only TV show heroines get to have children and jobs and husbands that treat them properly. That is not, however, her life. 

When she gets home, she pays her gas bill and drowns a cactus a colleague bought her as a house warming present in water. 

(It doesn't help. But then, that's the point.)

 

vii.  
'What are you doing up here?'

'Mike told me about this place.'

Donna cringes. The bloody kid was worse than a fourth grader with a pet rock for show and tell. He couldn't keep a secret to save his life. 

'You're stealing my think space.'

'Borrowing, temporarily. I need it more than you do.'

She sort of wants to snap at him, or even retort in some way but she's so indifferent. She shakes her head, rolls back on her heels like of course he would find out about this, and take this too, of course he would need it more, have a better claim, take instead of asking. She nods then, and heads back toward the door because she just can't look at him right now. The level of disgust she feels with herself is making her skin crawl. 

And whether it's the cold or her plummeting self confidance, she slams the door on her way out and she feels the New York wind cling to her all the way down to the ground floor. 

It won't let go, she thinks to herself, indulging in a little romanticism, until I do.

 

viii.  
Is there a way, she asks herself, standing on the reception tower of the building above the door to the terrace, to escape without being noticed? She sits there for a long time, wonders idly about Cuba or maybe finding herself a lover (she makes a note to have sex with a Alaskan man).

Her phone reminds her, calmly and tragicomically, that she has dry cleaning to pick up and to 'kill the cactus' at 6 pm tonight at   _Home_

Perhaps she has something to live for afterall. 

 

ix.   
Perhaps this is her life story. To live out a life desperately clinging to and desperately trying to move on from a man. It makes her feel so unaccomplished that this is all she is able to ascribe to her name. 

Donna Paulsen, hopeless fool in love with a man that is not good enough for her and never will be. 

 

x.  
Pearson Hardman or Pearson nothing as it is now is playing a dangerous game of russian roulette. Jessica tries to bluff her way through the situation and Donna watches Harvey disintegrate. 

She ends up in his office, midnight on a Saturday listening to Miles Davis scratching through the ruffling papers and eating nothing but grand romantic gestures and her own stupid heart. He makes to ask her something, pauses over his file and opens his mouth like he's been waiting to say something for months and only just found enough air to formulate his syllables but the phone rings and it's, 'Mike? No. You idiot, I'll be there.'

She doesn't look up, swats him away and tells him to call her if he needs her. 

 

xi.   
He doesn't. 

And she thinks 'what is the point?'

(daydreams about, donna i love you and donna i need you but it feels wrong like the characters in her head are just caricatures of reality.)

What is the point precisely, she reminds herself, is that Harvey needs her obliquely. Like a manager, or owner or general person to rely on. Not someone to love.

 

xii.  
Who needs love when you have pinot grigio?

 

xiii.  
Rachel cries the day she leaves for Cambridge and its all Donna can do not to start tearing up herself when the girl packs up her desk and moves for the elevator. 

'And you'll call?' Donna intones for the third time, pulling out of her sixth hug. 

'I will,' she promises and spends her last ten minutes avoiding making puppy eyes with Mike. 

The redhead smiles to herself because there is a sense of deja vu here even if she chooses to deny it. 

 

xiv.  
She walks into work the next morning, the long way, past Rachel's old office that looks like a supply closet without the paralegal's memorabilia and work spread out over the chestnut like a fan. 

'It's weird,' the disembodied voice behind her says after a beat, 'I'll miss her.'

Of course you will, Donna thinks as she smiles and ushers him to Harvey's office. She'll come back accomplished and self-confidant and you'll love her despite it. 

 

xv.  
Pearson Paulsen, she remembers saying to Harvey, a pipedream, a _laugh_

He had looked at her like she was mad. 

(Incompetent, inachievable, inexecusable.)

 

xvi.   
Cactus' are hardy plants and it survives. Barely, but it manages to open one tiny flower in Spring. 

 

xvii.  
(She dates a man called Andy, in finance, and she's still a secretary at a top tier law firm but at least she has something other than a hobby for killing plants and flirting with her dry cleaner.)

Andy is  _ok_ but that in itself is ok because she'll always be able to do better than her last boyfriend. 

Harvey will never be able to do better than her. 

 

xviii.  
(She gives the cactus to Harvey as a present one Christmas eve and he pricks his finger on a thorn. It's a sign.)

 


End file.
